


to be fearful of the night

by growlery



Category: Bandom, Disney RPF
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Canon, Community: cottoncandy_bingo, Crash Landing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 21:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kevin finds an alien in his back yard. That turns out to be just the start of his problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to be fearful of the night

**Author's Note:**

> For cotton candy bingo (glow-in-the-dark). Thanks to sparrowsverse for the encouragement. The title is from a ~~quote~~ poem by ~~Galileo~~ Sarah Williams, _The Old Astronomer to His Pupil_.

There’s an angel in Kevin’s back yard. 

At least, Kevin’s pretty sure it’s an angel, because even though it’s person-shaped and doesn’t have wings, it’s glowing, a bright spot of colour in the darkness. (Kevin doesn’t think angels are really supposed to have wings, anyway. He always imagined they just looked like normal people.) Kevin’s never seen anything that bright before, and it makes something in his chest feel all light and warm, just like when he prays. 

He takes a step towards it – them? _it_ feels dehumanising, even though, uh, it very obviously isn’t human; it looks vaguely masculine, by human standards, but Kevin has no idea which pronouns would be appropriate – and smiles, tentatively. “Hi,” he offers. 

The angel makes a strangled kind of noise Kevin can’t parse, and then fiddles with something at their throat. They’re wearing some kind of dark body-con suit, covering everything except their hands, neck and head. 

“Hello,” they croak out, eyeing Kevin like they’ve never seen anything like him before. 

“Did the Lord send you?” Kevin asks, and the angel frowns. 

“Nobody sent me,” the angel says. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Oh,” Kevin draws out, eyes wide. “What- what’s your name?”

“Uh,” the angel says, “Mike,” and Kevin’s eyes go impossibly wider. 

“Michael,” he breathes, “oh, oh my gosh, the _archangel_.”

“What are you- oh no,” Mike says quickly, “ _fuck_ no,” and Kevin gasps because the angel just _swore_. 

“Are you fallen?” he whispers, half-terrified of the answer. 

“No, I am not- fuck, I’m not an _angel_.” The- whatever they are, Mike, sighs heavily. “I forgot people still believed in those things here.”

“But you’re glowing,” Kevin says, confused, and Mike holds their hands up to their face with an expression of mingled horror and disgust. 

“I hate this fucking planet,” they say, “what the fuck even _is_ that?”

Kevin is less scandalised about the swearing this time, since he figures if Mike isn’t an angel it’s not so bad, but even at twenty three he hasn’t quite got used to people swearing so freely around him, so it takes a moment for the words to properly sink in. 

“Wait,” Kevin says faintly, “ _planet_?”

*

Kevin invites the – alien, he supposes it must be an alien, though Kevin is still having trouble processing _planet_ – into his house, because it seems rude to let them freeze to death outside. 

They stop glowing the second Kevin flicks the lights on. 

“Huh,” he says, “that’s weird,” and Mike lifts their hands and frowns. “Looks like you only glow in the dark. Heh,” Kevin snickers, and Mike rolls their eyes. 

Kevin goes over to the sink to pour Mike a glass of water, and Mike eyes it kind of suspiciously before taking it. 

“It’s just water,” Kevin says. “Y’know, H2O? Makes up around seventy per cent of human bodies?”

Mike rolls their eyes again. They seem to do that a lot; Kevin wonders if it’s an alien thing or just a Mike thing. “I know what water is,” they say. “I’m not completely ignorant about earth culture.”

“Oh,” Kevin says, feeling stupid, because he _is_ ignorant about wherever-Mike-is-from culture. So is the rest of his planet, presumably, but still. “Where are you, uh, from, then?”

Mike glances away, says, “Far away,” and Kevin has a million questions – _I didn’t see a spaceship out there, how did you get here? **Why** are you here?_ – but he shuts his mouth tight at the look on Mike’s face. 

“You, uh,” he says instead, very intelligently, “can I get you something to eat?”

“I don’t think you have anything I can eat here,” Mike says. “It’s okay, I have supplies on my ship.”

“Your ship?” Kevin stares at them, feeling stupid all over again. “I didn’t see a ship.”

“It’s camouflaged,” Mike says, like, of course it is, why didn’t Kevin think of that. “I should be able to get it fixed enough to leave in a day or two.”

“Oh,” Kevin says, “okay. I have a guest bedroom, you can stay there until then.”

Mike stares at him for a moment. “The back yard’s fine, kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” Kevin says, flinching a little, “I’m twenty three years old.”

Mike winks at him, says, “That’s practically newborn to me,” and Kevin feels flustered for reasons he can’t quite explain. 

“I’m Kevin,” he says, because he abruptly realised he never actually introduced himself. “So, uh, yeah, you can call me Kevin, not kid.”

Mike huffs a laugh. “Sure,” they say, “okay. Nice to meet you, Kevin.”

“Anyway,” Kevin says quickly, “I can’t let you stay in the back yard, that would be horrible, my mother would totally be ashamed of me if she ever found out. And it’s not like I don’t have the room.”

Mike chews their lip thoughtfully. It’s such a _human_ thing to do that Kevin stares at them, blushing when Mike looks up and catches him. 

“Okay,” Mike says, “why the fuck not?”

*

Mike’s not in the guest bedroom when Kevin gets up the next morning. Kevin resolutely does not panic – Mike probably got up ages ago; do aliens even need to sleep? – and goes downstairs to fix himself some breakfast. 

Mike’s sitting at the kitchen table, sipping at what looks like a cup of coffee. Kevin exhales a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and says, “Good morning.” 

Mike looks up and nods in response, pushing another cup of what Kevin can now tell is definitely coffee at him. 

“Thanks,” Kevin says, beaming at Mike as he picks up the cup. “Are you not going to go work on your ship?”

Mike shrugs at him. “I already went out to assess the damage,” they say. “It might take me a little longer than I thought.” Mike frowns. “And I’m going to need some stuff.”

“Oh,” Kevin says, “okay. We could go shopping later, if you want?”

“You don’t have to come with me,” Mike says, looking at him strangely. 

“Mike,” Kevin says patiently, “how are you going to find anything by yourself? And more to the point, how are you planning on paying for any of it?”

Mike shrugs, says, “I kind of wasn’t, really,” and Kevin lets out an involuntary gasp of horror. “Okay, okay,” Mike mutters, rolling their eyes, “I guess it would be useful to have someone who knew what they were doing around.”

“You should probably change first,” Kevin suggests, “I mean, you might attract attention in that. I have clothes you can wear, but, uh.” He pauses, taking a long sip of coffee. “I don’t have dresses? Or, like, girls’ clothes, if that’s something more your-”

“Kevin,” Mike says, like they’re trying not to laugh, “I’m not a girl.”

“Oh.” Kevin pauses. “Are you a boy?”

“I guess that’s the most appropriate equivalent, yeah,” Mike says, cocking their – his? – head. “Our concept of gender is complicated.”

“So’s ours,” Kevin offers. “You’ll be okay with jeans and a t-shirt, then?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, “that’d be fine.”

Kevin squints at him. “I think we’re about the same size,” he says, “but you’re a little taller than me, so the jeans might be a little short. You could just poke around my closet and see what fits?”

Mike smiles at him and, wow, Mike has a really pretty smile, wide and kind of blindingly bright. Kevin has to hide his blush behind his cup of coffee. 

“Sure,” Mike says, “thanks.”

*

Mike comes down a little later, after Kevin’s eaten some toast and started a fresh cup of coffee. He nearly chokes on said coffee when he sees Mike. 

Kevin and Mike are really _not_ the same size, if the way Kevin’s shirt drags across Mike’s chest is any indication. He’s wearing an old pair of Nick’s jeans that Kevin never grew into but they’re still tight on Mike, still short enough that his poky ankles are visible below the frayed hems. Kevin wonders how similar their anatomy is, and actually chokes this time. 

“You look nice,” he manages after a brief bout of coughing, and immediately wants to smack himself because what, seriously, is he actually morphing into his dad, what the heck. 

Mike’s lips quirk in what can only be described as a smirk. “Thank you kindly,” he says, mock-polite. “You ready to go, then?”

Kevin gulps down the rest of his coffee. “Yeah, just a sec.”

He grabs a hat and sunglasses, feeling himself flush at Mike’s raised eyebrows. “I’m sort of famous,” he explains, rolling his eyes a little at himself, because now he doesn’t sound like his dad, he just sounds like a douche. 

“Sort of famous,” Mike repeats, raising his eyebrows. 

“I was in a band,” Kevin says, “still in a band, really, we’re just on hiatus.” He shrugs. “We’re, yeah, sort of famous. Them more than me, but still.”

“Huh,” Mike says, but before he can ask anything else Kevin says, brightly, “So what kind of things do you need, exactly?”

*

Mike needs _weird_ things, like, really weird things. Kevin desperately hopes he isn’t recognised or, like, no one – including and _especially_ his parents – goes through his credit card records because it’d be really kind of hard to explain why he needs five boxes of glow sticks, twelve different colours of face paint, four pairs of fishnet tights and a vibrator. Kevin blushes particularly hard at that last one. 

“Do you, um, do you really need, uh, that?” he asks weakly, and Mike rolls his eyes. 

“I need something that oscillates at specifiable frequencies,” he says, “and it’s the easiest, least suspicious thing we could get, so, yeah.”

“Least suspicious. _Right_. How do you even know what a vibrator _is_ ,” Kevin mumbles, his cheeks still hot with mortification. Sex toys don’t seem like the kind of think they’d teach in Earth 101, somehow. 

Mike drops him a lewd wink. “You think we don’t have sex where I come from, kid?”

Kevin didn’t know he could go redder than he already had, but he figures it’s nice to know he can surpass his own limits. “I don’t know, actually,” he says, “maybe you reproduce by mushing brain tissue together or something.”

Mike laughs. It makes his nose scrunch up and his eyes crinkle and Kevin has to look away, has to chant _don’t get attached_ to himself over and over for a minute, because Mike is an alien and Mike isn’t staying and Kevin can’t let himself forget that, he _can’t_. 

“We don’t,” Mike says, kind of unnecessarily. “Come on, let’s get going.”

*

Kevin doesn’t get recognised, thank the Lord, though the woman behind the counter at the adult shop does give him a weird look when Mike goes to buy the vibrator, as well as a few other things he picked up while Kevin was trying not to look at anything. Probably that was more because it was painfully obvious Kevin had no business being there than because the girl recognised him. Probably. 

Mike disappears into the back yard as soon as they get back – literally; he gets to a certain point and then just vanishes into thin air – and Kevin watches the space where Mike was for a minute before he turns and goes back into the house. Mike’ll come get him if he needs help, not that Kevin imagines he’d be much help fixing up an alien spaceship.

Mike’s in the back yard for the rest of the day. Kevin watches a film, fixes himself dinner and finds himself wondering what it is, exactly, people-who-are-from-where-Mike’s-from eat, before deciding he probably doesn’t want to know and getting his guitar out. 

He’s idling picking through old Jonas Brothers songs when Mike comes in. 

He blinks at Kevin. 

Kevin blinks back. 

“Not bad,” Mike says eventually, and Kevin ducks his head with a mumbled _thank you_. “We have something like this back home. It’s a... guitar, right? My data banks aren’t entirely sure.”

“It’s a guitar, yeah,” Kevin says, and holds it out. “Do you want to-”

“No, it’s okay,” Mike says hastily, but Kevin saw the look on his face, before, and he keeps the guitar held out until Mike takes it. 

“What should I play?” Mike asks, kind of awkwardly, as he sits down heavily next to Kevin. 

“Anything you want,” Kevin replies, and Mike looks thoughtful for a second before nodding. He starts playing, softly at first, too softly for Kevin to really make out the melody, but he gets steadily louder until Kevin can hear it properly. It’s kind of quietly, hauntingly beautiful, and Mike has his head ducked, not looking at Kevin. 

“That was gorgeous,” Kevin says, after Mike fumbles a chord and abruptly stops playing. 

“Yeah,” Mike says. “My, uh, my friend wrote it. There are lyrics, but.” He shrugs. “I don’t sing.”

“Okay,” Kevin says, and doesn’t press it. He nudges Mike’s knee with his own, says, “What did you come in for, by the way? I didn’t ask.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Mike says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Do you think you could help me out a little? I just need a spare pair of hands.”

“Of course,” Kevin says, getting up, “it’s not like I’m doing much here.”

*

It got dark without Kevin noticing, but he definitely notices when they get outside and Mike lights up, the same iridescent glow Kevin remembers. It’s sort of transfixing, honestly, and Kevin doesn’t realise he’s been staring until Mike snaps, “Not a fucking freak show, Kevin,” and Kevin flushes. 

“Sorry,” he says, and he means it. 

Mike only grunts in response. Kevin stares pointedly at the ground after that, which is how he misses Mike stopping and nearly walks into his back. 

“Sorry,” he says again. “This is the ship?”

Mike nods and Kevin peers in front of them, sure that there’ll be a shimmer or a space where the air doesn’t quite sit right over the outline of a ship, but there’s nothing. 

Mike grabs Kevin’s hand, which, wow, he really wasn’t expecting, but Kevin barely has time to wonder at how rough and warm Mike’s skin is – when he let himself think about it, he thought it would be cold and kind of clammy – before Mike’s dragging him forward, into the ship. 

It’s darker than it was outside, because at least outside there was the moonlight to guide them. Now there’s just Mike-light, faint enough that Kevin can only make out the vague outline of what looks like a control unit, like in aeroplanes or submarines. Mike tugs him over to it, steadying Kevin when he stumbles into Mike’s side. 

“Thanks,” Kevin mutters, and lets go of Mike’s hand, because that feels like something he should do now that they’ve stopped moving. “This place looks really cool. From what I can see of it, anyway.”

“Yeah.” Mike glances around. “I’ve mostly fixed the lights but I don’t want to keep them on permanently. I don’t want to waste fuel unnecessarily.”

He leans forward, towards the control unit thing, and flicks a switch. A light comes on above their head and Mike promptly dims; Kevin can see better, now, much better, but he still misses it. 

“Wow,” he says, pivoting on his heel to take in the rest of the ship. “ _Definitely_ cool.”

Mike grins at him. “Remind me to give you a tour at some point,” he says, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

“Will do,” Kevin replies with a mock-salute. “What did you need help with, then?”

It turns out Mike literally just needs a spare pair of hands; Kevin mostly holds things in place while Mike bashes at them, fixing them where he needs them to be. 

“So that’s what you needed the vibrator for,” Kevin says, after Mike’s done affixing it to the engine. “Huh. That’s really kind of awesome.”

“I did most of the general repairs on my last ship,” Mike says. “I got pretty good at patching things up with things we had just lying around.”

“We?” Kevin says tentatively, because he hasn’t asked about Mike’s past because he really really doesn’t want to talk about it, that much is obvious, but that doesn’t mean Kevin isn’t desperately curious. 

“My old crew,” Mike says, and his mouth gets sort of tight and- and sad, sad is a good word for the set of his lips, the way they only curl up a little on one side. “Things... weren’t going well, and most of them jumped ship before things could get really bad. Our captain decided it would be best if the rest of us went solo.” Mike shrugs. “And then I crash-landed here.”

“Oh,” Kevin says softly. 

He has precisely no idea how to deal with this. It’s not like he’s had to deal with many homesick aliens, oh, _ever_ , but he steps forward and wraps his arms tight around Mike’s waist because he figures hugs are rarely a bad solution. Mike doesn’t hug him back, exactly, but after a minute he shifts so his arms aren’t just hanging awkwardly at his sides and his head is kind of resting against Kevin’s. 

“My brothers are doing the solo thing too,” Kevin says. Mike shifts, like he’s going to step back, but Kevin just holds on tighter til he relaxes again. “They’re, uh, I’m in a band with my brothers. You can laugh, go on.”

“I’m not going to laugh,” Mike says, but Kevin can _hear_ the smirk in his voice. He decides, manfully, to let it go. 

“It’s not forever,” Kevin says, “and I still talk to them all the time, so I guess it isn’t really the same thing, but I just. I know how it feels. Being... being lonely. I get it.”

“I’m not lonely,” Mike says immediately, and Kevin doesn’t say anything, just squeezes a little tighter. 

“I’ll pay you back,” Mike says, after a minute, and Kevin steps back, cocks his head in confusion. “For all the things you bought today, I’ll- I’ll pay you back. Somehow.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Kevin says, still confused, but Mike is shaking his head hard. 

“I do,” he insists, an almost desperate edge to his voice, “I _do_ ,” and Kevin just nods. 

“Okay,” he says, gently, “if you want to, I guess, that’d be okay. You don’t have money or anything, though.”

Mike shrugs. “I can fix things. Around the house, or whatever. I’m good at that.”

“Okay,” Kevin says, and wonders if he should hug Mike again, if Mike would allow it now. Kevin doesn’t. He just says, “So what did you use the sunglasses for?” and pretends not to notice the relief on Mike’s face. 

*

Kevin starts yawning a few hours later, but Mike doesn’t notice until Kevin’s eyes actually start slipping closed of their own accord and he has to keep shaking himself back to awareness. 

“You should’ve said you were tired,” Mike says, grabbing him, “come on.”

Kevin makes a token protest, but he really is kind of exhausted, and it’s not like he particularly minds being manhandled. He leans on Mike more heavily than he probably needs to as Mike guides him up the stairs to his room, helps him into bed. Kevin’s awake enough still to kick off his jeans, but he leaves his t-shirt on because he doesn’t like sleeping naked and, besides, Mike is still _here_.

“You should go to bed too,” Kevin says, “or, wait, do you even need to sleep? Sorry, I didn’t ask, did I.”

Mike rolls his eyes, Kevin can just _tell_. “Not a robot, Kevin,” he says, and Kevin giggles, says, “Yeah, you’re an _alien_ ,” and starts laughing even harder. 

Mike doesn’t get it, Kevin can tell that too, but he huffs a little laugh and says, “Yeah. I need sleep just as much as you do.”

“You could sleep here,” Kevin offers, because it’s late and he’s _tired_ and it doesn’t seem like a bad idea until it’s out of his mouth. “No, wait, no, you shouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, and there’s something about his voice, something Kevin thinks he could maybe identify if he were a little more awake. “Yeah, I probably shouldn’t.”

Kevin thinks Mike might brush a kiss against his forehead, might whisper, “G’night,” into his ear, but he also thinks he’s probably asleep by that point. Especially since, a few seconds later, Mike flicks off the light and for a moment, he is the brightest thing Kevin has ever seen, brighter even than the sun and all the stars in the sky, and Kevin can’t catch his breath. 

And then Mike’s gone, plunging the world into darkness. 

*

Kevin stops by Mike’s room the next morning and finds, to his surprise, that Mike is still in bed. Or, well. Not literally, because Mike is actually hovering a few inches _above_ the bed, dropping down every time he inhales and rising back up on the exhale. It looks so much like something out of a cartoon that Kevin stops and stares for a minute, until he hears Mike’s voice in his head, _not a fucking freak show_ , and shakes himself, forcing himself down the hall. 

Except then he hears Mike’s voice again saying _I probably shouldn’t_ and shakes himself for an entirely different reason. Did he really ask Mike to sleep with him last night, _really_? Granted, he didn’t mean it like _that_ , he just meant that the spare room was kind of far away, all the way across the hall, which seemed like such a way to go when there was a bed right there. That was seriously all Kevin meant, but Mike probably didn’t know that. Kevin is torn between wanting to explain and never wanting to talk about it ever. _Ever_. 

He settles quite firmly on the latter and heads down to the kitchen to make coffee and waffles. He uses up the last of the milk, and the sugar, and tries to remember the last time he went grocery shopping. 

Mike comes down while Kevin is considering this. He picks up the coffee Kevin made for him with a nod of thanks, sliding into the seat opposite him as he takes a sip. 

“So you don’t eat our food,” Kevin says, consideringly, “but you’ll drink our coffee.”

Mike grins at him, the sort of blinding grin that Kevin is even less able to deal with this soon after waking up. “Caffeine,” he says, “is pretty universally awesome.”

Kevin nods because yeah, it kind of is. “I see how it is,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “When you invade it’ll be for our rich supplies of coffee beans.”

Mike points a finger at him. “Be afraid,” he intones, “be very afraid,” and Kevin bursts out laughing, has to rest his head on the table for a minute. 

(It’s way too early for this, for _anything_ , and Mike seems to be fine with pretending Kevin didn’t embarrass the heck out of himself last night. Kevin can be forgiven for being a teensy bit hysterical.)

“Your shower’s kind of shitty,” Mike says, when Kevin’s got himself under control again. “It doesn’t work nearly as well as it could.”

Kevin nods; it is a truth universally acknowledged – among his family, at least – that Kevin’s shower is a piece of crap. The spray is never as strong as he wants it to be and it only has two temperature settings (lukewarm or Antarctic) but then something occurs to him and he gapes at Mike. 

“You used the shower,” he says, kind of stupidly. 

Mike rolls his eyes, says, “Not a robot,” again, and Kevin _knows_ that, okay, that wasn’t even in the region of what he was meant. Just, Kevin may have a mildly graphic visual of Mike in the shower playing on loop in his head right now. 

“I can fix it,” Mike says, “was my point.”

“You don’t have to,” Kevin starts, but Mike just looks at him. “Okay, fine, thank you, that’d be awesome. Do you need, like, tools or something? A spare pair of hands?”

“I’m good,” Mike says. “I’ll probably fix your sink while I’m at it, the tap is seriously dodgy.”

“Okay,” Kevin says, getting up. “I’ll just show you where to turn off the water, then.”

*

Kevin makes more coffee when he gets back from grocery shopping, after he puts everything away. He’s been gone a few hours, got waylaid at the music store on his way back and lost himself in the rows and rows of CDs, he figures Mike’ll want something to keep him going. 

His phone buzzes twice before he can get far up the stairs, though, and he fishes it out with one hand. 

_I bet you’re a terrible sugar daddy_ Joe’s sent, and _he’s not that hot for a sex slave. I am disappoint_ and Kevin kind of boggles at the screen for a moment. 

_What are you talking about_ he sends back eventually. His phone buzzes again a minute later, but with an email instead of a text. It’s just a few links to what Kevin is going to assume are articles with a winky face underneath, and Kevin has no idea what’s going on here but there’s a healthy sense of dread settling in the pit of his stomach. 

His mouth falls open when he reads the first article, and he actually chokes when he reads the second. 

“Apparently,” Kevin starts when he gets to the bathroom, and Mike looks up from where he’s doing something complicated-looking to Kevin’s sink, “the internet either thinks you’re an urchin I took in off the street or my live-in sex slave. Or both. Apparently. It’s really weird.”

Mike’s forehead creases, and he sits back on his legs, kneeling. “I don’t think I’m hot enough to be a sex slave,” he says, thoughtful, “not by what I know of Earth standards, anyway.”

“That’s what my brother said,” Kevin says, and doesn’t say _you’re both wrong_ , just hands Mike a cup of coffee and shows him his phone, the last article still open. 

Mike frowns down at the screen. “Huh.”

“It’s so weird, isn’t it,” Kevin says, shaking his head. 

“No,” Mike says, “or, well, it is, you’d be a terrible sugar daddy, even I know that, but I just. The communication device.” He peers at it even more closely than before. “It’s really... primitive.”

Kevin thinks maybe he should be offended by that, on behalf of his species and all, but he remembers Mike’s spaceship yesterday and, yeah, primitive sounds like a pretty fair judgement next to that. 

“Aren’t you more bothered by this?” he asks instead, because he feels it’s a pertinent question right now. 

Mike apparently doesn’t agree. He gives Kevin a strange look. “Why would I be?”

“Well, y’know...” Kevin flails around for the right words. “They know who you are now. You can’t exactly keep a low profile when your face is all over the internet.” 

“Kevin,” Mike says, “if I were worried about your government knocking down your door and kidnapping me to perform horrible experiments on me, I would not still be here, trust me.”

He says this like it should be obvious, but Kevin can only say, shocked into almost silence, “Oh.”

“I’ve seen your alien movies,” Mike informs him, rolling his eyes a little. “Seriously. I’ll be fine. It’s not like anybody’s going to look at a picture of me and think I’m an alien, is it?”

“Well, no,” Kevin says, a little reluctant to give in so easily, but it’s not like Mike doesn’t have a point. The headlines of the articles would be _very_ different if someone had realised Mike was an alien. Mike’s safe, probably. Kevin’s just- he’s just worried about him. He doesn’t want Mike to end up in some kind of Area 51, stuck here forever, never able to return to his home planet, to his friends. 

“Kevin,” Mike says, and his voice is so unexpectedly soft it shocks Kevin into looking up at him, “trust me. There’s nothing to worry about, okay?”

“Okay,” Kevin says, and this time, this time he believes him. 

“Are _you_ bothered by it?” Mike asks, after a minute, and Kevin frowns.

“Why would I be?” he says, an unconscious echo of Mike. 

Mike shrugs, taking a sip of his coffee. “People are, sometimes,” he says, not quite looking at Kevin. “Your planet isn’t exactly great about sexuality on the whole and you- well.”

Kevin frowns a little harder, and then suddenly it hits him, _hard_ , what Mike is getting at, and he bursts out laughing. He has to put his head between his knees while he gets himself under control, hiccuping, wiping away the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. 

“I’m not,” he tells Mike, when he can speak again. “Really, really not.”

“I kind of got that,” Mike says, smiling a little, “shockingly.”

He goes back to fiddling with the sink and Kevin watches him for a minute, leaning against the door frame. 

“I came out last year,” Kevin says eventually. “Publicly, I mean, my family and friends already knew.” He shrugs. “There’s been a lot worse written about me.”

Mike looks up at Kevin and Kevin can’t read the look in his eyes. There’s a beat of silence, two, and then Mike says, “Your sink’s all fixed,” and Kevin exhales.

“Thanks,” he says. 

“Anything else you need me to do?”

Kevin shakes his head. “You’ve done more than enough, seriously.”

Mike puts the cup down on the window sill and strides over to him, bracketing him in with hands flat against the wall on either side of Kevin’s waist. His eyes are narrow and intent, fixed solely on Kevin, and Kevin gulps.

“Let me rephrase that,” Mike says, his voice low. “Is there anything else you _want_ me to do?”

Kevin licks his lips and Mike’s eyes track the movement. He doesn’t stop staring at Kevin’s mouth. Kevin says, “Yeah, there’s, I, yeah,” and he didn’t know he could _sound_ like this, low and scratchy and desperate. 

Mike’s eyebrows go up, just a little. “Yeah?” he repeats. “I’m gonna need something a little more specific than-”

The rest of what Mike was going to say gets abruptly and unceremoniously cut off, because Mike’s mouth is rather more busy doing other things. Other things like kissing Kevin, because Kevin just _kissed him_ , just surged up and crushed their mouths together. 

Mike makes a startled sound in the back of his throat but he kisses Kevin back, fisting one hand in Kevin’s shirt to pull him in closer. It starts off rough, all teeth and tongue and Mike’s body hard against his, but slowly it turns into something softer. The drag of their lips against each other is almost lazy, and Kevin sort of thinks he could do this forever, could hold this moment in his hands and never let it go. (He can’t, of course, he knows that, but the idea makes him feel giddy and overwhelmed anyway.)

Kevin has to draw back, after a while, has to rest his head in the crook of Mike’s neck and just breathe for a minute. Mike is warm and solid and smells kind of like Kevin, and Kevin was wrong, before. This is what he wants, right here, but it’s no less impossible. 

“You good?” Mike asks, stroking gently down Kevin’s back. 

“Yeah,” Kevin says, “yeah, I’m good.”

*

Kevin jolts awake in the middle of the night and, for a moment, has no idea why. He blinks, blearily, and is about to just roll over and go back to sleep when he hears it. It’s the same noise, high-pitched and unsettling, that he heard the night he found Mike. He remembers, now, why he thought it was a sign from the Lord; nothing of this world could sound like that. 

Kevin’s got out of bed before he’s made a conscious decision to do so, throwing on a hoodie over his pyjamas and hurrying out of the room. Mike’s way ahead of him, taking the stairs two at a time. 

“Do you think it’s-” Kevin starts, and can’t finish. Mike doesn’t turn his head, but from the ragged edges of his breathing Kevin can imagine the look on his face. 

Mike stops at the back door, his curled fingers hovering over the handle. It’s dark everywhere except the space around him, the glow pulsing faintly where Mike is shaking. 

“Mike,” Kevin says, after a minute, and his voice comes out softer than he meant it to. He steps forward and takes Mike’s other hand. Mike jerks, a little, and turns to look at him. He looks... scared, _terrified_ , even, and Kevin threads their fingers together and squeezes. “Okay?”

Mike nods and drops Kevin’s hand, turning back around. Kevin hears him inhale, hears him mutter something under his breath, before he turns the handle and opens the door. 

“Carden, you fucker,” says the figure in front of them, glowing the same bright light as Mike. “You stopped answering my calls, what the fuck was up with that?”

“ _Sisky_? What are you doing here?” Mike demands. “How the fuck did you even _find_ me?”

“Your distress signal,” Sisky says, slowly, like this should be obvious. 

Mike frowns. “I didn’t send out a distress signal.”

“Yeah, well, your ship’s kind of a little bit clever, it can do that all by itself,” Sisky informs him, rolling his eyes a little. “We couldn’t trace your exact location, but we’ve been monitoring Earth communications for days. We figured you wouldn’t stay off the radar long.” Sisky quirks his eyebrows. “Live-in sex slave, Mike, really?”

Kevin turns to Mike, the _I told you so_ ready on his lips, but then he sees Mike’s face. The shock has mostly melted away, replaced with something... else, something soft and warm and indescribably _fond_. It hits Kevin, suddenly, that this must be one of Mike’s old crewmates, and wants to smack himself for not realising earlier. 

“Rumours of my shenanigans have been greatly exaggerated,” Mike deadpans, and Kevin chokes on a laugh. 

Sisky turns to look at him, interest sparking in his eyes. “And this must be your sugar daddy,” he says, giving Kevin an appraising look. “Kevin Jonas, right?” Kevin nods, and Sisky grins, pulling him into a hug without preamble. “Thanks for taking care of this asshole here, it’s much appreciated.”

“No problem,” Kevin says honestly, even as Mike protests, “Hey!” behind them. “He’s been great.”

“You’re the asshole,” Mike says, sounding sullen, and Kevin think it’s safe to assume he’s talking to Sisky. 

“And you’re an ungrateful little fucker,” Sisky retorts, but there’s no heat behind it. “Aren’t you going to even thank me for rescuing you?”

“I didn’t need rescuing,” Mike points out, still sullen. “If you gave me another day or two I’d have fixed my ship enough to leave.”

Something clenches in Kevin’s chest at the word _leave_ , something small and hard and bitterly familiar. For a moment, he wants to say _no_ and _please_ and _stay, stay, don’t leave me, stay_. So much for not getting attached, Kevin thinks, and breathes out slowly. 

“You said we,” he says, before Sisky can say anything back. Sisky turns to look at him, cocking his head inquisitively. “Before, when you were talking about finding Mike- you said we. Where are the rest of you?”

Sisky slants a look at Mike before he says, carefully, “Still on the ship.”

“The ship,” Mike echoes, his voice oddly hollow. “You have a new crew?”

“Yeah,” Sisky says. “I joined up with _Say Anything_ after _The Academy_ dissolved. They’re good guys.”

“They are,” Mike agrees. “Beckett isn’t with you, then?”

Sisky’s mouth tightens, and he says, “No. I haven’t seen him in months, actually.”

Mike visibly relaxes. Kevin wonders who Beckett is, what the pained look on Mike’s face when he said his name means. “And the others?”

“Chislett’s okay, he’s bouncing between crews, trying to find his niche, but the Butcher...” Sisky shrugs, kicking at the ground with the toe of his boot. “He’s not doing too good. _The Animal Upstairs_ dissolved on him, too, and he’s kind of been kicking around on his own for a while. It’s no way to live, floating round space by yourself.”

“No,” Mike agrees, again, “it isn’t.”

Kevin kind of wants to take his hand again, but he doesn’t think that would be appropriate right now. He has no part in this, in any of this; he’s just a spectator, a voyeur. He doesn’t belong here. 

Sisky studies Mike for a moment, two, and then he says, “Come with us.”

“Sisky-”

“Just listen to me, okay?” Sisky bursts out. Mike blinks at him, clearly taken aback. Sisky takes a deep breath before he speaks again. “It’s pretty fucking clear you aren’t cut out for the solo life either. You need a crew.”

“I don’t-” Mike starts, but he cuts himself off at a look from Sisky. 

“You need a crew,” Sisky repeats carefully, “and I don’t think _Say Anything_ is it for you, not really, but we can help you find one that is. You _and_ the Butcher. Okay?”

“I-” Mike looks lost, and he’s glowing so fiercely it hurts to look at him. “Yeah,” he says eventually, “yeah, okay.”

Sisky exhales. “Good,” he says, “because if you weren’t going to come willingly I was totally ready to knock you out and drag you onboard.”

Mike huffs a laugh, and that seems to break the tension forming in the air. “No kidnapping necessary,” he says. “I’m totally willing.”

Sisky whoops and throws his arms around Mike, burying his head in his neck. “I’ve fucking missed you, Mike Carden,” Sisky mumbles, and Mike hugs him back a little harder. Kevin watches them, and he tells the awful clenchy feeling in his chest to shut up. He’s happy for Mike, he _is_ , and it’s not like Kevin’s even known him that long, really. 

“I should leave you guys to it,” he says awkwardly, taking a step back. 

“Oh no no, no way, you’re not getting away that easily,” Sisky says, pulling away from Mike to look hard at Kevin. 

“I, uh,” Kevin says, taken aback. “I won’t tell anyone anything? It’s not like anyone’d believe me, but I promise I-”

“Mike,” Sisky cuts in, ignoring him, “don’t you have something to say?”

Mike shoots a look at him Kevin doesn’t understand. “No,” Mike says, pointedly, “I really don’t.”

Sisky does something complicated-looking with his eyebrows, and Mike eyebrows at him right back. Sisky makes a fist with one hand and slams it into the flat of the other, and Mike just shakes his head hard. Sisky sighs heavily. 

“Since Mike’s such a chickenshit,” he says, ignoring Mike’s noise of protest, “I guess I’ll have to be the one to ask if you want to come too.”

Kevin’s mouth falls open. “If I... _really_?” he breathes. 

“Yes, really,” Sisky says patiently. “Not forever, of course, we’d have you back for Christmas.”

“But I-” Kevin shakes his head, hard. “I can’t, I don’t- I can’t just _leave_ , I have a whole life here.”

“But you’re lonely,” Mike says suddenly, and they both turn to look at him. He looks uncomfortable, but he presses on. “What do you have to stay for, Kevin, really?”

Sisky turns back to Kevin, eyebrow arched. Kevin looks from him to Mike, who looks... he looks hopeful, kind of, maybe. Kevin doesn’t think he’s imagining the little quirk at the corner of Mike’s mouth. 

“Christmas, you say,” Kevin says, slowly. 

“Christmas,” Mike confirms, and the quirk turns into a full-on grin, brighter even than Mike himself. “Christmas Eve, even, right outside your parents’ house.”

Kevin bites his lip. “The whole of space?”

“Every single star,” Mike says, his voice going hushed. “You can’t even imagine how beautiful they are, Kevin.”

Kevin grins back at him, can’t help himself. “In that case,” he says, “how can I say no?”


End file.
